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10 Things You Can Do Now To Increase Your Energy Levels

Feeling sluggish? Lethargic? Irritable? Finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning?

When we ask our Manchester personal training clients to tell us what their main goals are, getting lean is usually number 1, and increasing their energy is pretty much always a close second.

Their story is pretty is a common one: long working hours, too much stress, poor work-life balance.

Added to that, overuse of stimulants just to get through the day, too much sugar or simple carbs to provide short term energy, and consistent use of alcohol in the evenings as a way of unwinding.

Often, food and pro-active self-care get squeezed out of the picture too, as life becomes dominated by a sense of ‘holding with your fingertips’ rather than being on the front foot, maximising the opportunities that each day brings.

Here are 10 simple things you can do right now to increase your energy levels, and make the most of each day:

1/ Get at least 8 hours sleep

Get your sleep in complete darkness with as little artificial noise and light as possible.

The blue light emitted from phone and computer screens has a profound impact on sleep; it directly impacts your main sleep hormone, melatonin. It’s better to avoid digital screens before bed.

How we feel is partly regulated by our hormones, and the single biggest factor in causing hormone imbalances is poor quality sleep.

Poor quality and quantity of sleep has been shown to affect hormonal health, as well as results in increased carbohydrate and calorie intake.

2/ Drink at least 2 litres or pure, filtered water

Drink enough water throughout the day.

One of the first signs of dehydration is reduced energy levels.

The energy generated from water is used to manufacture more energy in the form of ATP and GTP (chemical sources of energy in the body).

Drink 35ml per kg of body weight, per day.

3/ Increase your good fats

We have become obsessed by ‘low fat’.

Supermarkets are stocking ‘fat-free’ products more than ever, and Weight Watchers are fat-phobic (let’s not get started on Weight Watchers, or we could be here a while).

What the food industry and many diet promoters have been ignorant about for decades is that not all fats are bad, and that fat is critical to health.

That’s starting to change, but many people, including many nutrition professionals, still see fat as the enemy because of its high calorie content (fat has 9 calories per gram vs 4 calories per gram for carbs).

Fatty acids produce more energy per gram than carbohydrates and are the body’s second choice for energy, after glucose. And essential fatty acids are essential for optimal cognitive function.

8/ Do something that makes you feel good every day

But on a serious note, most of us are too busy trying to do the right thing for others, at work, in relationships, at home.

Taking time out something that makes you feel good about yourself is often not on top of our long To Do lists.

Even worse, in the crazy busy, super squeezed, overwhelming world we live in today, we can feel guilty about taking time out for ourselves.

Taking time out – even 5 minutes a day – to do something that energises, refreshes, and enriches you on an emotional level, can make a huge difference both to your energy levels and how you feel about yourself.

It doesn’t have to be a life changing, super-meaningful thing.

It’s the small things that you do on a consistent basis that add up over time and end up changing your life. Things like having 10 minutes of phone free time where you just breathe deeply.

Or taking 5 minutes to stretch.

Or stopping by a book shop on your way home to see what’s new.

Make a list of 10 things, and see if you can do one of those things every day.

During periods of chronic stress, the cortisol and DHEA levels can fall as the adrenal glands run out of juice, resulting in sub-optimal adrenal function at best and pronounced adrenal (or more correctly HPA axis) dysfunction at worst.

Get your adrenal hormones tested and fix them.

Also try this simple exercise; list 10 things that give you energy (tying in with point number 8above) and 10 things that drain you of energy, think about work situations, relationships, colleagues, what we see, what we think about, what we do, things in our environment.

It could be a real eye-opener.

And I’m sure you’ll know where to go with it from there.

10/ Exercise

We all know we should do some, but when you’re tired, exercising could be the last thing you feel like doing.

But I’ll let you into a secret, it doesn’t have to be a full blown workout or a 10k run.

A simple walk in the park for 30mins could be all your body needs to release some energy-promoting and mood-enhancing neurotransmitters such as dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin and endorphins.

When you’re absolutely crunched for energy, just start simple.

We have a tendency to think we need to ‘go hard or go home’ when it comes to exercise, but in our experience of training hundreds of people over last 10 years, a hard workout can be the last thing your poor stress hormones need.

Remember that exercise is just a form of stress for your body, so beating yourself with intense exercise can be counter-productive – swerving the spin class and swapping it for a Yin yoga class can be exactly what you need on some days.

When we have personal training clients who come into the gym on off days, we switch to doing a work-in rather than a work-out.

Intense work-outs, the kind where we’re really slamming it, deplete you of energy.

Work-ins, such as mobility work, technique work, or focusing on exercises that bring balance to your body, replenish you and still add value to your journey in achieving a lean, highly functional, life ready body.

Knowing when to work-out and when to work-in is a skill that can add a huge amount of value and energy to your life.

The wrap

Human beings are not designed, from a fundamental evolutionary standpoint, to deal with our modern environment.

We live in world that depletes us.

To regain our energy, replenish ourselves, and live life to the maximum, we need to consciously employ the right strategies.

If we don’t, the chances are you’ll be stuck in a dysfunctional, low energy rut for years to come.